The invention relates generally to ground working equipment, such as agricultural equipment, and more specifically, to a blade sharpening system for agricultural implements.
It is well known that to attain the best agricultural performance from a piece of land, a farmer must cultivate the soil, typically through a tilling operation. Common tilling operations include plowing, harrowing, and sub-soiling. Modern farmers perform these tilling operations by pulling a tilling implement behind a motorized tractor. Depending on the crop selection and the soil conditions, a farmer may need to perform several tilling operations at different times over a crop cycle to properly cultivate the land to suit the crop choice. In one type of tilling operation, rows of blades are pulled through soil to break up clods or lumps of soil, as well as old plant material to provide a more amenable soil structure for planting and to level the soil surface.
As will be appreciated, maintaining a sharp edge on the blades enables the blades to cut plant residue efficiently. Unfortunately, contact with the soil causes the edge of the blades to become dull over time. Therefore, a farmer may periodically (e.g., every few months) sharpen the blades to maintain efficient operation of the tillage implement. Due to the large number of blades on a typical tillage implement, the process of sharpening each blade may be exceedingly time consuming. For example, a farmer may remove each blade from the implement and sharpen the edge of the blade with a handheld grinder. Alternatively, the farmer may utilize a portable blade sharpener having transport wheels. The portable sharpener may be successively rolled into alignment with each blade to sharpen the edge of the respective blade. While this configuration enables the blades to be sharpened while on the implement, the portable sharpener typically requires a substantially flat surface to facilitate alignment between a grinding disc and the blade. Consequently, the portable sharpener may not be utilized to sharpen blades in the field. Moreover, because the position of the grinding disc is fixed with respect to the blade, the portable sharpener may be unable to effectively sharpen fluted or wavy blades.